


Nightmares and Daydreams

by 3HobbitsInATrenchcoat



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Literal Sleeping Together, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28579911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3HobbitsInATrenchcoat/pseuds/3HobbitsInATrenchcoat
Summary: You've been Stan Pines partner for a while, shared his bed enough that you wake up when he's not there. You go looking for him.
Relationships: Stan Pines/Reader
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	Nightmares and Daydreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RoboBunny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoboBunny/gifts).



> This is soft fluff for Robobunny for the Grunkle Bunker Secret Santa 2020. I hope you like it.

Winters in Gravity Falls, Oregon are like nothing you have ever known. One day it might be clear and sunny, cool winter light glinting off glittering snowbanks, the next day a blizzard howling in an eerily human voice might sweep down from the mountains and white out everything in its path.

Sure, other places have calm and blizzards, but the human voice is what really bothers you about these freak storms. That and the fact that the local weatherman has taken to consulting tarot cards for a more accurate read on the forecast.

So far he’s been 5 for 5 and predicting clear skies with a chance of frog rain next week. You’re a little worried the poor things might freeze but this is Gravity Falls. For all you know they could be some sort of magical ice frog only found in this  _ one godforsaken town in the middle of goddamn nowhere _ .

Anyway, Gravity Falls winters might suck, but at least you don’t have to go through them alone anymore. Not since you started shacking up with Stan Pines, Man of Mystery and local tourist trap entrepreneur. No matter how weird or cold the weather gets, you can just roll right over into his furnace-like body heat and go right back to sleep. He always makes a token grumble, but willingly opens his arms anyway.

Which is what makes it so odd that tonight you wake up not to howling winds outside, but to a cold and empty bed, devoid of the man and the warmth that accompanies him.

You roll into the space he ought to be, patting at the cool sheets like you might find him hiding small among them. When that doesn’t produce your partner you grumble and sit up, rubbing grit from your eyes. The hopeful part of your brain says maybe he just went downstairs for a late night snack, but the cynical part of your brain says he likely fell asleep in the basement and you won’t see him again until well into the morning.

You might as well check the kitchen, just to be sure.

As soon as you step out into the hallway and peer down the stairs, you know that at least part of that first assumption might be correct. You can see the dim light of the kitchen filtering through the doorway and up the stairwell, casting the fading striped wallpaper in a hazy glow. Outside of Stan’s room, away from the wood stove that heats it, the house is frigid. You duck back in the room and pull the quilt off the bed while you shove your feet into your slippers. No point in freezing your ass off looking for a man who is most likely not lost at all.

The stairs creak under your feet as you pad down them. Stan’s house grows noisier with every passing year but he refuses to fix some of it, saying that the noise and peeling wallpaper give it “rustic charm.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean. You wince at an especially heinous squeak. At least you know that if anyone ever tries to sneak into the house with intent to murder, you’ll hear them coming long before you see them.

You slip down the hall to the kitchen, breath barely visible in the chill air, and pause in the doorway as you see… no one. The lights are on but there’s no one in the room. Maybe Stan really did go down to the creepy basement to play with his science gizmos until all hours. You don’t really want to go down there and look for him but… you will if you have to.

You flick the lights off in the kitchen, plunging the downstairs into darkness. Mostly darkness, anyway. The absence of the kitchen light brings the flicker of the television to your attention. You frown and change your trajectory from the gift shop to the living room.

There, curled into his armchair under a thin blanket with only tv static to light the room, you find Stan. You lean in the doorframe to watch the slow rise and fall of his chest with a small smile twitching across your lips. He must have fallen asleep watching some telenovela Mrs. Ramirez sent him and now even that channel has gone off the air for the night.

You’ve stepped into the room, hand reaching for the power knob on the tv, when a low groan catches your attention. Your eyes snap towards Stan, taking in the way his fingers are clutched white-knuckled at the edge of the blanket, the furrow in his brow as his face twists into a grimace. Suddenly his posture seems much less relaxed and you realize that this is a man who is warding off a nightmare.

As you stand there, debating your options, his groans turn into muttering words. They’re a slurred mix of English and Spanish and impossible to understand at this late hour, but he’s clearly in distress. You make up your mind and go kneel by Stan’s chair, quilt pooling around you like a cape.

“ Stan,” you reach out and gently shake his shoulder. “Stan, babe. Wake up.”

He doesn’t even react, just keeps muttering, body twitching with unknown stimuli. You shake his shoulder a little harder, but all he does is turn away with a groan.

“ Goddamn it, Stan,” you say a little louder. “You’re having a nightmare, wake up!”

That gets a reaction out of him, a faint jerk as he almost comes awake before sinking back down into distressed mutterings. Normally the man is a light sleeper, coming awake at any suspicious noise, but now he’s caught in the throes of a nightmare and you don’t know what else to do.

With a frustrated huff you stand back up, gathering the quilt around yourself and staring down at the overstuffed armchair. There’s just enough room that if you managed to squish into the side of it… you make up your mind. Carefully (so as not to actually startle Stan completely awake and get punched for your trouble) you climb into his lap, settling half over one of his legs and half crammed between his hip and the squishy arm of the chair. He’s already under one blanket but you pull your own quilt over both of you as you wrap your arms around him.

Slowly the pressure of your embrace seems to calm him, his erratic breathing and small twitches settle into the more rhythmic pattern of deep sleep. Warm against his side, you drift off as well.

\-----

Some hours later, you wake up to a broad hand carding through your hair.

“ Hey, doll,” rumbles Stan’s voice. “Musta passed out before I could make it to bed. Clearly I was missed.”

He smirks at you and you lean up to press a kiss to his whiskery cheek. “Tried to wake you up to get you to bed, but…” you trail off, not sure if you should remind him of a nightmare he might not remember.

Stan grimaces. “Probably would have been a right bear, darlin’. My dreams weren’t so pleasant last night.” His fingers card through your hair again. “But that made waking up with you in my lap all the better.”

Your arms tighten around Stan’s torso. “Yeah. I was trying to help… you didn’t seem to be enjoying whatever was going on in your head.”

“ Never really do,” says Stan before falling quiet. It’s tempting to ask what he was dreaming about, what could make a man like Stan Pines cry out in his sleep. But you already know the answer, or at least enough of an answer to not really  _ want  _ to know the rest. Between the homelessness and whatever creepy science bullshit is going down in the basement… well, your partner has had a long, hard life. Little wonder he has nightmares.

You almost think he’s fallen back to sleep when he makes a pained grunt and gently prods you out of his lap so he can sit up, cracking his back with a wince. “Doubt I’m gonna get much more rest sitting in this chair, whaddaya say to some breakfast and then going back to bed in an actual bed?”

“ Do you mean going to bed and sleeping or ‘going to bed’?” You punctuate the last bit with air quotes and he laughs, hauling himself to his feet and reaching out to swat your ass. You dance away with a smirk, trailing quilt behind you.

“ No one’s stopping us from doing both, doll.” He picks up his own blanket from where it had slid to the floor in the night, considering it for a long moment before shrugging and wrapping it around his shoulders like your own blanket cape. “But we need food before anything else. Get a move on.”

He seems to be deflecting from his nightmares for now. Which, while not entirely healthy… is a good sign for the rest of the day.

Some days, Stan will spend the morning after a nightmare in a twitchy haze, jumping at nothing and drawn tight as a bowstring. On those days you can’t really do much other than sit quiet with him and assure him that everything is alright. Other days he’s fine, a little tired maybe, drinking a little more coffee than normal, but otherwise his usual blustering larger-than-life self. 

Today seems to be one of the latter as he brushes past you to the kitchen, pausing to press a gentle kiss to the top of your head. “If you make coffee I’ll whip up a batch of Stancakes,” he says, tracing the pad of his thumb over your cheek. “If you can find the tv trays maybe we can haul our spoils up to bed with us and shut out the cold for a while longer. Replace the nightmares with some daydreams, eh?” He waggles his eyebrows at you and you can’t help the giggle that bubbles out.

A day spent in bed with Stan Pines? That sounds like pure delight.

Some days, you’re enough to drive Stan’s nightmares away. You know the two of you are going to need to deal with the dreams eventually, but for now you’re happy to replace them with coffee and daydreams. 


End file.
